Lisa Riley, best known for playing Mandy Dingle in Emmerdale, has spoken out after a series of AI-generated images surfaced implying she is pregnant after years of struggling to conceive.
The 50-year-old ITV soap star said she is "sick to death" of such posts emerging, which show her clutching a baby scan in one image and holding a newborn baby in another. Lisa has no children with her partner, musician Al Benković, and has previously been open about her struggles to get pregnant.
Instagram Outburst
Writing in a post on Instagram, Lisa said: "THIS HAS TO STOP!!!!! It's absolutely horrendous!!! Saying that I'm pregnant again!! How is this allowed it makes me so upset……what world do we live in that these lies, and more lies are allowed to be put in the public domain. I'm sick to death of it now!!!"
Fans rushed to her defence in the comments, with one writing: "Those fake accounts should be taken down. I understand how hurtful this is." Another said: "WTF!!! is wrong with people, shouldn't post fake crap it's not nice for the person getting it especially when you don't need," and a third wrote: "Horrendous , that someone should [do] this."
Recurring Issue
This is not the first time Lisa has had to speak out about such AI-generated images. Earlier this year, another fake post claimed she was pregnant. The star has been candid about her fertility struggles in the past, so was horrified to see the recent post claim she was becoming a mother.
She said: "Someone had made a photograph with AI, bearing in mind all my struggles, me and Al, to make something say I was pregnant. Family members believed it and what upsets me the most is that I spoke so openly about the fact that I couldn't get pregnant and then I woke up to all that."
Loose Women Appearance
While appearing on Loose Women alongside Kaye Adams, GK Barry and Denise Welch, the former Strictly Come Dancing star also said she has "no control" over what AI can do and described it as a "horrible" thing to endure.
She said: "It's insanity and it really, really hurts. People were saying it didn't matter that I was 49, but it's my life and I've got no control. People were saying congratulations but I can't get pregnant and it's horrible."
The soap star, who also appeared on I'm A Celebrity and in dramas such as Fat Friends, Waterloo Road and Three Girls, confessed she would have loved to become a mum but concluded it just "wasn't meant to be".
She said: "I've spoken a lot about the fact that, me personally, being a Catholic, it was drummed into us that you don't use contraception and you don't have sex before marriage and everything, and that was in my head a lot."
She continued: "Then later in life, I did choose my career and [fertility tracking] apps weren't available then to look at your cycle, and I waited and waited and found the right person in Al, and when it came to the time of trying, I couldn't fall pregnant. I look now at your happiness with your husband and the baby, and you have got that career, it's amazing, and I wasn't that lucky and tried everything until the point where Al turned to me and said, 'You have to stop the IVF treatment, because it's diminishing you and taking your personality away, you're trying too hard'.
"Sometimes in life, it's not meant to be. And I have to sit with you girls here today knowing that, however, I'm very lucky because of my family unit."
She added that her nephews and niece have become "part of my jigsaw", saying: "When I couldn't get pregnant, and feeling so rubbish in myself, and I've said this a lot, I felt like a jigsaw with a missing piece."
